Enterprise Architecture Framework - Non-Functional Attributes

Non-Functional Attributes (NFAs) always exist though their signficance and priority differs when considered with certain other functional or non-functional attribute. It’s particularly important to pay attention and consider them in the inital phase of the EA framework development, as these attributes may have direct or indirect impact on some of the functional attribute of the framework. Considering Non Functional attributes early in the lifecycle is important because NFAs tend to be cross-cutting, and because they tend to drive important aspects of your architecture, they do cause considerable impact on certain important aspects of your test strategy. For example, security requirements will drive the need to support security testing, performance requirements will drive the need for stress and load testing, and so on. These testing needs in turn may drive aspects of your test environments and your testing tool choices.

The Enterprise Architecture team will interact closely with all the other management processes in an organisation, especially the IT management processes. When all these processes work together effectively, an enterprise will be able to successfully manage strategic changes and drive business transformation effectively and efficiently. Often in organisations little thought has been given to the integration of the EA processes to the other management processes. Identifying and considering NFAs early on will certainly of help in proactively address such issues. Having a clear picture of the NFAs help the EAs in taking into account innovative alternatives or trade-off before presenting decision-ready options. 

NFAs play a vital role in defining certain atomic properties of each enterprise architecture framework. The challenge with NFAs is that it is difficult to trace and identify the same. It is also difficult to define metrics to measure its performance. Described below in this blog are the typical NFAs that need to be considered while developing the EA Framework:

• Adaptability – Be it people, process or technology, Adaptability as an attribute has never been more needed in the enterprise workplace. With the change happening at a faster pace than ever before, Adaptability is becoming a key attribute of every resource, including the human resouces apart from the systems. The resources identified as part of the EA Framework should have the the ability to accept and acquire the changes that is coming along. This way, the longivity of the EA Framework can be furthered with fewer or least changes to the framework itself.
• Compatibility – EA Framework will have many artificacts which are not only interfaced with the other internal artifacts, but also with the external actors. Making this work seamlessly requires that the interfaces shall be compatible with each other at all times. The EA Framework shall be developed considering this important aspect of compatibility in mind and any incremental changes should not lead to break the compatibility, so that functional performance of the same is not impacted. Considering the compatibility of the artificats in the initial phase of the development of the EA Framework will save considerable efforts than fixing it when a compatibility issue surface later in the lifecycle.
• Cohesiveness – Cohesion is the uniqueness in purpose of the system elements. A certain amount of formality is essential in providing uniformity and forming a coherent aggregate. This is critical when the components of EA Framework are developed by people both from a centralized EA team and from projects and programs. Obviously, lower level architectures should conform to the upper level architectures and unnecessary duplication should be avoided. Cohesion has to be considered in developing components or models describing a certain target area from different viewpoints. Utilizing a formal EA framework in an appropriate way is critical in achieving uniformity and cohesion in EA products.
• Conceptuality – The benefit of enterprise architecture (EA) management is directly coupled to the underlying conceptualization of the enterprise. This conceptualization should reflect the goals pursued by the EA management endeavor and focus on the areas of interest of the involved stakeholders. A conceptual model captures the essential concepts that are present or should be present in the specific artifiact or entity and thus makes the understanding or visualization of such entity easier and unambiguous.
• Coupling – It describes the level of dependencies between modules and components of the system. Loosely coupled systems minimize the assumptions they make about one another while still providing a meaningful interchange. Conversely, Tightly coupled systems have restrictive effect on the variability and evolution of the connected components or systems. The level of coupling that is appropriate for the particular system component shall be ascertained and considered while developing the EA Framework.
• Diversity – Diversity is the difference between the systems or components of the EA Framework in terms of technology, methodology, principles, process, environment, etc. Diversity shall be at the manageable level, so as to minimise the cost of maintaining expertise in and connectivity between multiple processing environments. The advantages of minimum diversity include: standard packaging of components; predictable implementation impact; predictable valuations and returns; redefined testing; and increased flexibility to accommodate future changes. 
• Dependability – As system operations become more pervasive, the enterprise become more dependent on them. Dependable systems are characterized by a number of attributes including: reliability, availability, safety and security. For some attributes, there exist probability-based theoretic foundations, enabling the application of dependability analysis techniques.  To ensure that all stakeholders at different level get the same understanding, considering the level of dependability expected out of the systems and components becomes critical. This will also ensure that the systems and components are developed and implemented as expected. 
• Extensibility – One of the capabilities of the enterprise architecture is to allow for various artifacts of prebuilt integrations to be extended without or with least efforts. Extensibility also ensures that such system or component extensions are protected during implementing changes or revisions later on.  It is essential to evaluate and consider the appropriate level of extensibility of each system or component that is part of the EA Framework in the initial phase. 
• Flexibility – It is a quality attribute of business information systems that contributes to the prevention of aging. It may also be considered as the capability of the enterprise to connect people, process and information in way that allows enterprise to become more flexible and responsive to the dynamics of its ever changing environment, stakeholders and competitors. This requires simplification of underlying technology and related infrastructure and creation of a consolidated view of and access to, all available resources in the enterprise.  
• Interoperability – It is the ability of systems (including organizations) to exchange and use exchanged information without knowledge of the characteristics or inner workings of the collaborating systems (or organizations). Clearly, making systems interoperable can mean many things. The strongest drive for interoperability is technical interoperability—the technical problem of sharing information that already exists in different systems from different times and places by enabling sharing, or at least providing connected technical services. Therefore, it is imperative to develop the big picture of what data the enterprise needs to share, to receive as incoming data and to send to other systems. Both end points may reside within the enterprise, or some may reside in external enterprises..
• Maintainability – Maintainability is defined as the ease with which a system or component can be modified to correct faults, improve performance or other attributes, or adapt to a changed environment. A fast and continuously changing business environment demands flexible systems easy to modify and maintain. Maintainability is said to be affected by; the maturity of the human resources involved, the maturity of the process governing change management, the quality of the systems' supporting documentation, the systems' architectural quality and the quality of the enterprise ecosystem on which the system executes. Thus, identifying and appropriately documenting the expectations around this attribute will certainly help implementing a better EA Framework.
• Portability – It is the ability of the system to run under a different environment without any disruptions. Portability depends on the symmetry of conformance of both applications and the platform to the architected API. That is, the platform must support the API as specified, and the application must use no more than the specified API. Documenting the level of portability expected early on would contribute considerably in designing and developing the systems in line with the target platforms or ecosystems.
• Robustness – It is the ability of a system to recover elegantly after failure or restart. Clearly, robust and easily modifiable automation is fundamental to achieving an enterprise’s vision for the future. However, such benefits don’t come without their price. Hard work and management commitment, both from IT and from the highest levels of the business are needed to build the kind of integrated IT architecture plans that will make the difference between success and failure in today’s highly competitive business climate.  
• Scalability – It is the capability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged to accommodate that growth. Scalability, as a property of systems, is generally difficult to define and in any particular case it is necessary to define the specific requirements for scalability on those dimensions that are deemed important. The concept of scalability is desirable in technology as well as business settings.
• Security – With the ever evolving cyber threats both on the IT and as well as OT, security has become a very important NFA to be considered in the development of EA Framework. Considering its significance, the Security requirements ideally should be intertwined with EA Framework. Security must be designed into data elements from the beginning; it cannot be added later. Systems, data, and technologies must be protected from unauthorized access and manipulation. Headquarters information must be safeguarded against inadvertent or unauthorized alteration, sabotage, disaster, or disclosure.

Most of the attributes mentioned above are easily reckoned as Non Functional Requirements with respect to a Software System. Though Enterprise Architecture by itself may not be 'software system', it is a 'System' which depicts the blueprint of the enterprise's overall business activities with answers to the basic questions like What, Who, When, Where and How. Enterprise Architecture has multiple layers and implementation of software and IT systems is one such layer. To ensure that the stakeholders involved in different layers get the accurate view of the principles, strategies and guidlines, it is important to identify, analyze and consider these NFAs early on in the EA Framework development lifecycle.

DNS Security Extensions - Complexities To Be Aware Of

The Domain Name System (DNS) primarily offers a distributed database storing typed values by name.  The DNS acts like a phone book for the Internet, translating IP addresses into human-readable addresses. Obviously, as close to 100% of the internet requests are by the domain names, requiring the DNS servers resolve the domain names into IP addresses. This results in a very high load on the DNS servers located across the world. In order to support such a high frequency of requests, DNS employs a tree-wise hierarchy in both name and database structure. 

However, the wide-open nature of DNS leaves it susceptible to DNS hijacking and DNS cache poisoning attacks to redirect users to a different address than where they intended to go. This means that despite entering the correct web address, the user might be taken to a different website.DNS Secrutity Extension (DNSSEC) was brought in as the answer to the above problem.

DNSSEC is designed to protect Internet resolvers (clients) from forged DNS in order to prevent DNS tampering. DNSSEC offers protection against spoofing of DNS data by providing origin authentication, ensuring data integrity and authentication of non-existence by using public-key cryptography. It digitally signs the information published by the DNS with a set of cryptographic keys, making it harder to fake, and thus more secure.

The DNSSEC brings in certain additional records to be added to the DNS. The new record types are: RRSIG (for digital signature), DNSKEY (the public key), DS (Delegation Signer), and NSEC (pointer to next secure record). The new message header bits are: AD (for authenticated data) and CD (checking disabled). A DNSSEC validating resolver uses these records and public key (asymmetric) cryptography to prove the integrity of the DNS data. 

A hash of the public DNSKEY is stored in a DS record. This is stored in the parent zone. The validating resolver retrieves from the parent the DS record and its corresponding signature (RRSIG) and public key (DNSKEY); a hash of that public key is available from its parent. This becomes a chain of trust — also called an authentication chain. The validating resolver is configured with a trust anchor — this is the starting point which refers to a signed zone. The trust anchor is a DNSKEY or DS record and should be securely retrieved from a trusted source.

The successful implementation DNSSEC depends on the deployment of the same at all levels of the DNS architecture and the adoption by all involved in the DNS resolution process. One big step was given in July 2010 when the DNS root zone was signed. Since then, resolvers are enabled to configure the root zone as a trusted anchor which allows the validation of the complete chain of trust for the first time.  The introduction and use of DNSSEC has been controversial for over a decade due to its cost and complexity. However, its usage and adoption is steadily growing and in 2014, DNS overseer ICANN determined that all new generic top-level domains would have to use DNSSEC.

Implementing DNSSEC is not always unproblematic. Some faults in DNS are only visible in DNSSEC – and then only when validating making the debugging the DNSSEC difficult. DNS software that apply only to DNSSEC has many issues to be plugged, leading to disruptions in service.

Interoperability amongst the DNS software is another issue that is adding to the problems. Above all, attackers can abuse improperly configured DNSSEC domains to launch denial-of-service attacks. The following are some such major complexities that one should be aware of.

Zone Content Exposure

DNS is split into smaller pieces called zones. A zone typically starts at a domain name, and contains all records pertaining to the subdomains. Each zone is managed by a single manager. For example, kannan-subbiah.com is a zone containing all DNS records for kannan-subbiah.com and its subdomains (e.g. www.kannan-subbiah.com, links.kannan-subbiah.com). Unlinke DNS, with DNSSEC the requests will be at the signed zone level. As such, enabling DNSSEC may expose otherwise obscured zone content. Subdomains are sometimes used as login portals or other services that the site owner wants to keep private. A site owner may not want to reveal that “secretbackdoor.example.com” exists in order to protect that site from attackers.

Non-Existent Domains

Unlike standard DNS, where the server returns an unsigned NXDOMAIN (Non-Existent Domain) response when a subdomain does not exist, DNSSEC guarantees that every answer is signed. For statically signed zones, there are, by definition, a fixed number of records. Since each NSEC record points to the next, this results in a finite ‘ring’ of NSEC records that covers all the subdomains. This technique may unveils internal records if zone is not configured properly.The information that can be obtained can help us to map network hosts by enumerating the contents of a zone.

The NSEC3-walking attack

DNSSEC has undergone revisions on multiple occasions and NSEC3 is the current replacement for NSEC. "NSEC3 walking" is an easy privacy-violating attack against the current version of DNSSEC. After a few rounds of requests to a DNSSEC server, the attacker can collect a list of hashes of existing names. The attacker can then guess a name, hash the guess, check whether the hash is in the list, and repeat.  Compared to normal DNS, current DNSSEC (with NSEC3) makes privacy violations thousands of times faster for casual attackers, or millions of times faster for serious attackers. It also makes the privacy violations practically silent: the attackers are guessing names in secret, rather than flooding the legitimate servers with guesses. NSEC3 is advertised as being much better than NSEC. 

Key Management

DNSSEC was designed to operate in various modes, each providing different security, performance and convenience tradeoffs. Live signing solves the zone content exposure problem in exchange for less secure key management. The most common DNSSEC mode is offline signing of static zones. This allows the signing system to be highly protected from external threats by keeping the private keys on a machine that is not connected to the network. This operating model works well when the DNS information does not change often.

Key management for DNSSEC is similar to key management for TLS and has similar challenges. Enterprises that decide to manage DNSSEC internally need to generate and manage two sets of cryptographic keys – the Key Signing Key (KSK), critical in establishing the chain of trust, and the Zone Signing Key (ZSK), used to sign the domain name’s zone. Both types of keys need to be changed periodically in order to maintain their integrity. The more frequently a key is changed, the less material an attacker has to help him perform the cryptanalysis that would be required to reverse-engineer the private key.  

An attacker could decide to launch a Denial of Service (DoS) attack at the time of key rollover. That is why it is recommended to introduce some "jitter" into the rollover plan by introducing a small random element to the schedule. Instead of rolling the ZSK every 90 days like clockwork, a time within a 10-day window either side may be picked, so that it is not predictable.

Reflection/Amplification Threat

DNSSEC works over UDP, and the answers to DNS queries can be very long, containing multiple DNSKEY and RRSIG records. This is an attractive target for attackers since it allows them to ‘amplify’ their reflection attacks. If a small volume of spoofed UDP DNSSEC requests is sent to nameservers, the victim will receive a large volume of reflected traffic. Sometimes this is enough to overwhelm the victim’s server, and cause a denial of service. Specifically, an attacker sends a corrupted network packet to a certain server that then reflects it back to the victim. Using flaws in DNSSEC, it is possible to use that extra-large response as a way to amplify the number of packets sent – anywhere up to 100 times. That makes it an extremely effective tool in efforts to take servers offline.

The problem isn't with DNSSEC or its functionality, but rather how it's administered and deployed. DNSSEC is the best way to combat DNS hijacking, but the complexity of the signatures increases the possibility of administrators making mistakes. DNS is already susceptible to amplification attacks because there aren't a lot of ways to weed out fake traffic sources.

"DNSSEC prevents the manipulation of DNS record responses where a malicious actor could potentially send users to its own site. This extra security offered by DNSSEC comes at a price as attackers can leverage the larger domain sizes for DNS amplification attacks," Akamai said in a report.

The Promise and Peril of IoT

The Internet of Things can be defined as below:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors and connectivity to enable it to achieve greater value and service by exchanging data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected.

As we can see today, there are many things that we use in our daily livelihood are becoming smarter as they have embedded sensors and related electronics and algorithms, so thay they collect data in real time and convert the same into useful information. The most common smart things that we see now range from tracking devices, cars, refridgerators, security cameras, ovens and even dustbins. The Healthcare industry is leading in adopting the IoT devices and we have devices which are worn under the skin, that on the positive side help address many of the health concerns.


The IoT ecosystem primarily has three things: the device itself, with necessary sensors to collect data; the network that the devices use to share the data with the back end systems; and the back end system which apart from applying various analytical and algorithmic processes on the collected data also manages the devices, like rolling out updates, patches, etc. Certain devices may not have the ability to connect to the internet, in which case, the devices reach out to the back end through intermediate broker devices, like smart phones.

IoT is here to Stay

More and more IoT devices are coming out and will soon be everywhere and experts predict that the number can grow to 50 billion by year 2020. The IoT will undoubtedly be beneficial, but not without any perils. The pervasive interconnectedness of the IoT devices will also help the businesses in better understanding customer behavior and adopt appropriate business and marketing strategies targeting the specific customers. While the businesses like healthcare service provicers may make the most out of this IoT push, it poses many concerns ranging from data security to life safety of those who either directly or indirectly use such devices.

As the benefits seem to outweigh the drawbacks, it is very likely that IoT is here to stay and the concerns have to be addressed as it matures in the coming years. Let us examine the Promises that IoT era is about to bring in and also the Perils that come along.


The Promise

Healthcare

As mentioned earlier, healthcare providers are among the earliest to adopt the IoT. The wider deployment of electronic medical records (EMRs) and deployment of telemedicine technology that relies heavily on the type of remote data collection needed IoT to take it further and this convergence is expected to fuel the growth of IoT. With IoT, patients can submit their vitals from home without having to personally visit their physician and thus experiencing an enhanced and timely care, which could be life saving many times. This also helps in healthcare providers innovate further and come up with preventive care plans. Typical IoT devices that we see now are the fitness trackers, smart watches and other wearable devices like smart shoes.

Automobile

Next to Healthcare, Automobiles makers have shown greater interest in leveraging the IoT and thus the cars are becoming smart with capabilities like driverless cars, parking assist, switching on the A/c remotely, etc. IoT, if not already, will enrich the in car experience of the driver and passengers. The applications include enhanced in-car infotainment, improved safety controls and improved remote maintenance. For example, the car tyres are getting smarter with the ability to notify the tyre pressure in real time and even extend it further to automatically inflate or deflate the tyre on the go. The cars rolling out today already have some level of smartness built in, giving an enhanced safety and driving experience.

Manufacturing

The IoT brings revolutionary changes to society, economy, and technology, in such a manner that no one can just ignore to leverage it for its benefits. Manufacturing companies for that matter are seriously working to leverage IoT to: gain enhanced visibility over the production process; link the production to the business processes; and build responsive monitoring processes that improves the efficiency and quality of the products and services. Application of IoT in the above areas will lead to significants benefits like, securing and monitoring the movement of goods within and outside the factory, improving the quality of the products, preventive maintenance and upkeep of the plant & machinery, etc. When implemented correctly in every stage of the manufacturing process, IoT will be a significant benefit to employees on the manufacturing floor to the shippers and finally to the customer.

Retail

Retail industry would not want to be left out in this race of adopting the IoT as it has the biggest potential to leverage for a better business results. Being in direct contact with the end consumers, retailers can make use of in-store sensors and can track smartphones throughout the store and record path-to-purchase data that can later be used to optimize store layouts. Check out process can be made easier with smart shopping bags, so that the moment an item is dropped into the bag, the same is added to the order making the billing process a lot easier. IoT is likely to be very useful in fraud prevention, like theft of inventory, etc. Early adopters will be positioned to more quickly deliver IoT-enabled capabilities that can increase revenue, reduce costs and drive a differentiated brand experience. The IoT will be a disruptive force in retail operations.

Other Benefits

Energy sector is adopting IoT with smart meters and grids to gather real-time data for remote monitoring of resource consumption, malfunctions, etc. Needless to mention, IoT enables buidling of smarter homes with smart-connected home appliances and thermostats giving an ability to the users to remotely monitor and manage. IoT is also entering our homes in the form of internet-connected lightbulb, thermostat, door lock, washing machine or oven you can control from inside or outside your house.  IoT has the power of transforming our lives by offering the needed sensing, connectivity and intelligennce to improve our wellbeing. 

Having seen the some of the promises, some of which are already real, let us now check out the dangers that come along.

The Perils

With IoT devices, consumers are often exposed to newer risks and concerns that these new generation devices and gadgets bring in. The concerns include their own safety, possible effects on networks used apart from the data protection and legal issues.

Another concern for the businesses is the amount of data produced by all IoT devices. The enormous data produced by various sensors must be transmitted over the networks, needing high performance networks and stored calling for the storage and related infrastructure. The volume of data managed by enterprises between 2015 and 2020 is expected to grow 50 times year-over-year. The concern is not just on the volume, but also on the quality and security of the data. The legal issues around the data ownership, accountability and responsibility cannot be ruled out as well.

Security & Privacy

IT professionals are no longer just protecting data, circuits, and transmissions, but need to focus on the relationships between “things”, “service to things” and “things to people.” Safety must be ensured along with availability, confidentiality and integrity. IoT devices might expose vlunerabilities, exposing an easy way for hackers to get into networks and databases of personal data. While manufacturers are responsible for the security of their products, organizations and end users are equally responsible deploying and monoitoring within their network. 

The ways and means of securing IoT is unclear as the industry is still evolving with thousands of start ups coming with cheaper and basic connected devices, ignoring security and safety in mind. The concerns around security and privacy stems out basically at three levels. The first being from the device itself. The device containing sensors to gather data and to perform certain actions should have a mechanism securely identify and authenticate the host system, so that it respond to the authorized hosts only and not to any. The second being the network used for sending and receiving data. Most of the IoT devices use the wireless protocols like bluetooth, to reach out to an intermediate device for further connectivity with internet. Securing these networks is very important as well to ensure data protection. The third is the Back End, where the huge volume of data gathered are stored for making it into more meaningful information for further actions.

The Internet of Things can be a complex market with multiple nodes, and businesses should aim to simplify this process. There’s no better way to assure a customer of the simplicity and security, than communicating regularly. It might seem like a rudimentary thing to do, but the true test of a successful business is to ensure that there’s a process in place amidst all that clutter. 

Other Concerns

Today's connected cars contain a multitude of computers collecting data, from driving habits to location data to media or entertainment use. With connectivity, data collected by the vehicle’s computers are sent to a manufacturer or third-party and data is received as well in the form of command & control or as updates to the programs & algortihms. In addition to privacy concerns, these technologies potentially allow hackers to remotely access a vehicle’s control systems and thus impact the safety of the human life

The consumer behavior is being used to the advantage of the retailers. For example, your trousers might get horrified by your weight gain and in turn will have the TV showing contextual ads about new fad diets, the fridge selling you low-fat yogurt, etc.

By getting smarter, the things get expensive with a shorter life span. For instance, your mattress may not need replacing every couple of years, but the smart mattress with a sensor inside may need a maintenance and replacement sooner than that. For cheaper connected devices like the kettle, toaster, waist belt, light switches and door knobs; expect replacement of these components to become a new, regular expense.

The current generation kids are born with smart devices on hand and are extremely addicted to digital gadgets and the smartphone notifications keep them busy staying away from in-person socilaization, leading up for a complete digital burn-out. 

Information Security - Reducing Complexity

Change is constant and we are seeing that everything around us are evolving. Primarily, the evolution is happening on the following categories:

Threats:

There is a drastic change in the threat landscape between now and the 1980s or even 1990s. Between 1980 and 2000, a good anti-virus and firewall solution was considered well enough for an organization. But now those are not just enough and the hackers are using sophisticated tools, technology and sills to attack the organizations. The motive behind hacking has also evolved and in that front, we see that hacking, though illegal is a commercially viable profession or business. 

Compliance:

With the pace at which the Threat landscape is evolving, governments have reasons to be concerned much as they are increasingly leveraging the technology to better serve the citizens and thus giving room for an increased security risk. To combat such challenges, Governments have come up with regulatory compliance requirements making it even complex for the CSOs of enterprises.

Technology:

Technology is evolving at a much faster pace and as we are experiencing, we are seeing that the things around us are getting smarter with the ability to connect and communicate to internet. On the other side, considerable progress have been achieved in the Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, etc. These newer ‘smarter things’ are adding up to the complexity as the CSOs of the have to handle the threats that these bring on to the surface.

Needless to mention that the hackers too make the best use of the technology evolution and thus improving their attack capabilities day by day.

Business Needs:

The driver of adoption of these evolution is the business need. As businesses want to stay ahead of the competition, they leverage the evolving technologies and surge ahead of the competition. With a shorter time to market, all departments, including the security organization should be capable of accepting and implementing such changes at faster pace. Due to this time pressure, there is a tendency to look for easier and quicker ways to implement changes ignoring the best practices.

Consumerization

IT today is to simplify things to the consumers within and outside the organization and this raises the user expectation and thus leading to too many changes with some being unrealistic as well. This may include the users bringing their own anything (BYOA). This will soon include Bring Your Own Identity with chips implanted under the skin. As you would know, employees who work at the new high tech office campus in Sweden, EpiCenter can wave their hands to open doors, with an RFID chip implanted under the skin.

Connected world

Most enterprises are now connected with their business partners in terms for exchanging business data. With this the IT System perimeter extends to that of the partners’ as well to some extent. Rules and polices had to be relaxed to support such connected systems. Now that we are looking at things that we use every day will transform as connected things, adding up to the complexity.

Big data

Basically the need for big data tools to handle this. While this complexity did exist earlier, the attacks were not that sophisticated then. Today with the level of sophistication on the attack surface, the need for simplifying complexity of handling huge data is very much required.

Skillset

The threat landscape is widening and the attacks are getting sophisticated, which call for even better tools and technologies to be used to prevent or counter them. This means that there is a continuous change in the method, approach, tools and technology used, making it difficult to maintain and manage the skills of the human resources.

Application Eco System

A midsized organization will have hundreds of applications, needing to have different exceptions to the policies and rules. These applications may in turn use third party components and thus the chances of a vulnerability within these applications is very high. Given that these applications constantly undergo change and evolve, there is a possibility that the code or component left behind might expose a vulnerability.

How does this impact

Complexity impacts the security capability in many ways and the following are some:

Accuracy in Detection

The complexity makes the detection of a compromise difficult. Having to handle and correlating large volume of logs from different devices and that too different vendors will always be a challenge and this makes timely and accurate detection a remote possibility. A successful counter measure require accurate detection in the pre-infection or atleast in the infection stage. The later it is detected, it is complex to counter the same.

Resources

Each new security technology requires people to properly deploy, operate and maintain it. But it is difficult to add new heads to the Security Organization as and when a new tool or technology is considered. Similarly, managing the legacy solutions put in by older employees who are no longer employed in the organizaiton is likely to remain untouched due to the fear of breaking certain things.

Vulnerabilities and Exposures

With the huge number of applications used by the enterprise, this is a complex and huge exercise, unless the same is integrated into the build and delivery process by mandating a security vulnerability assessment. With innumerable number of applications, components, and the operating systems connecting to the enterprise network, this is almost impossible. Needless to mention that with the wearables and other smarter things connection to the network, who knows, what vulnerability exist in such smarter things and in turn exploited by hackers.

Methods for reducing complexity

Complexity is certainly bad and reducing complexity will beneficial both in terms of cost and otherwise. However, simplification by any means should not result in compromising the needed detection and protection abilities. A balanced approach is necessary so that the risk, cost and complexity are well balanced and beneficial to the organization. The following are some of the methods that may help reduce the complexity:

• Integrated processes as against isolated security processes. Every Business process should have the security related processes integrated within, so that every person in the organization will by default contribute towards security. The security process framework shall be designed in such a manner that it evolves over a period based on experience and feedback.
• Practicing Agile approach within the security organization, so that the complexity is hidden within tools and appliances by automating the same. Agile approach also helps the security organization to embrace changes faster, especially, when implementing changes in response to a detected threat or compromise. One has to carefully adopt such practices into the Security framework.
• Outsourcing the security operations to Managed Security Service Providers(MSSP) is certainly an option for small and medium enterprises that brings takes some of the complexity away and thus benefits the organization. Needless to mention here that outsourcing does not absolve the responsibility of the security organization from any security incident or breach.
• “Shrinking the Rack” – Consolidating technologies whereby devices combining multiple technology and capability within it may make it easier for deployment and administration. At the same time this has the risk of ‘having all eggs in one basket’, i.e. when such a device or solution is hacked, then it is far and wide open for the hackers.
• Mandating periodical code, component and process refactoring, where by unneeded legacy code, component and process are periodically reviewed and removed from the system. This will help keeping the applications maintainable and secure. Also implant security as a culture amongst all the employees, so that they handle security indicators responsibly.

Evolution of Wearables - What is in store?

Many of us are hearing more and more about fitness bands and some are using these. Big players are now rolling out smart watches, which has disrupted the basic fitness bands considerably in a very short span of time, as these smart watches have these basic fitness features within. Wearables like, glasses, jewellery, headgear, belts, armwear, wristwear, legwear, footwear, skin patches, exoskeletons and textiles, etc are also increasingly becoming "Smart". These emerging smart devices can be worn by human beings, which will collect various data based on embedded sensors and provide useful information that will help improve oneself, which could be on physical fitness, health, etc.

As one can understand, wearables is not just limited to the gadget that decorate your wrist and the number of wearable devices in different segments are growing very fast. With rapid evolution around this space, there are devices that are worn around different areas of the body and the following graphic shows the smart devices that are worn in different parts of the human body:

Who are at it?

Amongst many others, companies like Google, Samsung, Fitbit, Jawbone, GoQii, LG, Sony have been into Wearable devices and the competition is heating up as big players like Intel and Apple are betting big on this market.

Fitbit dominated the market for “basic bands,” according to Canalys’ market estimates, with more than 50 percent market share in the second half of the year. The Jawbone UP came second, cutting itself around a fifth of the pie, followed by Nike with its Fuelband.

The market forecast and the trend makes us feel that this wearable space could potentially disrupt many of the traditional devices. Thus many are looking at embracing this market either to see how this could disrupt their product line or to see if they have an opportunity in this space.

NeuroMetrix of Waltham will be jumping into the market for wearable electronic devices. But the company's new Quell device - an over-the-counter version of its Sensus device for management of chronic pain - is an actual medical device that is used to manage pain.

TomTom, the Dutch brand known for its standalone GPS navigators among other things, has brought its line of sports watches to India. TomTom launched four fitness wearables, which include TomTom Runner and Multi-Sport GPS watches, which deliever real time stats such as time, distance, pace, speed and calories burnt to runners, swimmers and cyclists.

Xiaomi said in a press release that local sales of its Mi Band - a fitness tracking bracelet that can be powered for 30 days on a single charge, has surpassed 100,000 units since it was unveiled. The Beijing-based company forecast that more than 500,000 Mi Bands will be sold in Taiwan by the end of the year, giving it the biggest share of the country's wearable device market that is currently led by Sony Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co.

Intel is firing on all cylinders to expand into the growing wearable technology arena such as smart watches and other Internet-enabled wearables. This investment in Vuzix Corporation is yet another effort by the chipmaker in this regard. Intel has unveiled Curie, a low-powered module no bigger than a button, as part of its vision to lead in the wearables field.

Rumors have said that HTC will be launching a smartwatch at the upcoming CES. The initially planned unveiling of the device was back in October, but the date was pushed back to CES 2015. Details of the device are unclear though, as it could be a smartwatch or a fitness tracker.

In addition to all these devices, there will also be wearable technology focusing on health and fitness, prosthetics and smart clothing.

The Trend

Shipments of smart wearables are expected to grow from 9.7 million in 2013 to 135 million in 2018, according to CCS Insight's new global forecast. The forecast predicts that wrist-worn devices will account for 87% of wearables to be shipped in 2018 — comprising 68 million smartwatches and 50 million smart bands with no screen or with a minimal, one-line display.

The smartwatch will be the leading product category and take an increasingly large share of wearable shipments. We estimate smartwatch shipments will rise by a compound annual rate of 41% over the next five years. Smartwatches will account for 59% of total wearable device shipments this year, and that share will expand to just over 70% of shipments by 2019.

The dominant sector will remain the healthcare sector which merges medical, fitness and wellness. It has the largest number of big names such as Apple, Accenture, Adidas, Fujitsu, Nike, Philips, Reebock, Samsung, SAP and Roche behind the most promising new developments.

Google's Android could be critical for developing the smart devices ecosystem, though significant changes will be required before it is suitable for all kinds of wearable devices. Google has already released Android Wear, targeted for smart watches.

Samsung, Google, Apple, with their massive war chests, have come into this market. They’re going to really help elevate the category for consumers. They’re going to help people understand the kinds of benefits that they can get from these products. The next few years, will see activity trackers with a little bit more biosensing data, and smart watches that people are going to have to charge every night.

If Wearables 1.0 was about creating the basic technologies for the wearable devices, Wearables 2.0 was and still is about crafting rich, robust business models based on these technologies. Wearables 3.0 will be all about perfecting, expanding and engaging customers at a level never experienced before. Big players in Wearable Technology and Internet of Things, from healthcare companies to insurance corporations, from high street retailers to music industry, Google, Apple, Samsung, Mercedes, Nike, Audi, just to name a few are all to give for free their devices in exchange for data.

What could be the future?

Though it’s easy to be pessimistic, one cannot ignore the potential that this market has in store. In any event, while we wait for this category to evolve, it’s entertaining to watch the puzzle pieces slowly come together. Convergence is expected, in much the same way that the smartphone extended the basic functionalities of the feature phone and disrupted certain traditional devices like point and shoot camera.

Medical and Wellness segment could be the one which will embrace this category of wearable devices and make health more affordable and self manageable for every one. For instance, one can wear a virtual doctor while on a specific treatment. A better example could be that the advances in wearable devices could lead to a scenario, where a diabetes patient may get appropriate doses of insulin administered into his body automatically based on various data collected by the sensors worn around the body. This could be risky, if the data, so collected are inaccurate and that is one of the major concern that is expected to be addressed in the coming years.

There has to be a marriage of fitness devices and medical management devices to really impact patient health. The future of wearable technology in fitness and health isn’t about the fitness bands and health monitors – it’s about what can be done with the data they collect, which means that these devices have to be supplemented by smart applications that are powered by big data and analytics tools.

A very large percentage of the population already owns a smart phone, which has lot many capabilities, including that of the basic wearable devices. As such, it will be critical that wearables provide a distinct value proposition that is separate and different than the smartphone, although the smartphone will likely still act as the “hub” to collect information.

We’re already starting to see sensor-embedded running vests and smart socks. But we could soon see jackets with solar panels (to recharge your gadgets on the go), 3D printed dresses that everyone can afford, health-monitoring underwear, even clothes that react to light. If we had the ability to change the look of all of our clothes, just by fiddling with our phones, it would mean less spending on new gear and plenty of spare wardrobe space.

Wearables need to move beyond the gamification of fitness to focus on monitoring and improving our health. With extra sensors and smarter and reliable algorithms, future devices should be able to warn us of high blood pressure and dehydration, fatigue and stress. Perhaps then, forewarned by data we understand, we’ll find wearables more compelling.

In Wearable Tech 3.0 Security is paramount. Six months from now and we’ll understand how poor the wearables 1.0 security was, if any! The big players in this market should finally draw, define and release the IoT and Wearables industry Security Standards. Wearable Tech 3.0 is the beginning of a new era where enterprises provide real value to their customers, a key technology benefit in the age of the customer.

Information Security - Cost Analysis

Reports indicate that the Information Security is now a Board Agenda and the security spending by enterprises is on the rise. This is more because of the raise in the data breaches worldwide and the increased hacking and cyber attacks. This impacting all enterprises, be it small, medium or large and across various segments, i.e. not only financial but also all domains. The increased exposure and financial damages associated with security risks have pushed enterprises to increase the budget allocations and mitigate if not avoid such risks.

The following recent predictions of Gartner influence the Information Security spending among enterprises:

• By 2015, roughly 10% of overall IT security enterprise product capabilities will be delivered in the cloud.
• Regulatory pressure will increase in Western Europe and Asia/Pacific from 2014.
• By year-end 2015, about 30% of infrastructure protection products will be purchased as part of a suite offering.
• By 2018, more than half of organizations will use security services firms that specialize in data protection, security risk management and security infrastructure management to enhance their security postures.
• Mobile security will be a higher priority for consumers from 2017 onward.

In the best interests of the investors, any spending or investment should be backed up with an appropriate cost-benefit analysis. Applying this cost-benefit-justifications to Information Security function is gaining focus but remains a challenge. Quantification forms the basis for being able to perform the cost-benefit analysis. The advantages of quanti fication are its accuracy, objectivity, and comparability. In addition, quanti cation is the basis for calculations and statistical analyses. While costing is a comparatively easier aspect, quantifying the benefits is still a challenge as it depends on the occurrence of uncertain events.

Starting with the idea of a Return on Security Investment (ROSI) several concepts have been developed to support the decision for or against an information measure. On way to do this is to apply the concept of Net Present Value (NPV). NPV-Formula for information security investments could be as below:

The following are the four aspects of Information Security costs:

• Information Security Management - This is about the costs associated with the Information Security function, which comprises of People, Process and Technology. Though quantifying this aspect of the cost is straightforward, measuring the benefits is not.
• Incidental costs of Information Security related decisions - As we all know, Information Security is a cross functional task and every personnel and process in the organization need to contribute towards Information Security. As such, implementation of any security control will cause additional overhead in other departments or functions. For instance, regulating the fair use of the Internet will require some extent of involvement from the HR function in the form of policies, code of conduct, ethics etc. Quantifying of both costs and benefits is not as easy.
• Cost of capital for Security investments - Like any investment, capital invested in security function has a cost and quantifying this element of cost is not at all a challenge.
• Costs arising out of security incidents - This is more like a Risk Management and all the principles of measuring the risks apply here as well. The risk measure for security incidents can be measured as a product of the probability and the impact. However quantifying this in absolute value requires the identification of the impacted information and / or related resource and the value of such resource. Many people have opined that information is the currency of the organization, but it has a dynamic value, i.e. the value of information depends not only on its significance to the organization but also its significance to others.

A common way of categorising and structuring costs in a repeatable and comparable way is required to manage the associated challenges. Building on that basis it becomes possible to identify cost-drivers and to analyse di fferent security management approaches like the following:

• Balance Sheet Oriented Approach - where the costs are categorized and quantified under personnel, hardware, software and services. This approach does not take into consideration of the cross functional aspect of the security function.
• Life Cycle Oriented Approach - where the costs are categorized and quantified against the various life cycle phases of the security function. Typically, the life cycle of the security function would be in the lines of Plan - Do - Check - Assess, in which case the costs are quantified with respect to each of the life cycle phases. This approach takes the project management approach and can be useful for quantifying the incremental cost of a specific security initiative, but this approach will not be useful for assessing the costs for the security management function as a whole.
• Process Oriented Approach - where the costs are categorized into direct and indirect costs at process level. Direct costs could comprise of People and Technology and the Indirect costs could comprise of cost allocated by various functions towards a specific process, the quantified costs of risk avoidance and risk mitigation. This approach can be customized further to suit the varying needs of the enterprise.
• Control Oriented Approach - where costs are categorized with respect to individual security control, which can be added up to ascertain the cost for a security area. However this approach has challenges abound in putting a standard approach and framework for ascertaining the costs at control level. The costs that every control comprise of are that of a share in the fixed organizational overhead, in addition to the variable costs of people, technology and the processes.
• Layer Oriented Approach - where information security costs are categorized against the different layers of the ISMS layers, namely Management System, People & Processes, Architecture & Concepts, Operational Measures and Pre-requisites.

While quantifying the benefits is not very easy, by applying the Quantitative Risk Analysis techniques, the cost of not implementing a specific security process or control can be ascertained, which can be considered as the benefit of implementing the control or process. Another technique that can be useful to categorize and visualize the cost-benefits is the modeling and simulation.

Information Security Controls Relating to Personnel

Information Security in an organization largely focusses on the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of data, information and related resources. While the risk of threats are increasing, study says that the threat is more from the inside than from the outside. This has mandated the need for framing polices, procedures and controls around the employees of the organization, so that such risks arising from within can be mitigated or managed well.

Whilst personnel security controls cannot provide guarantees, they are sensible precautions that provide for the identity of individuals to be properly established. In circumstances where risk assessments indicate that the necessary thresholds are met, they provide for checks to be made of official and other data sources that can indicate whether individuals may be susceptible to influence or pressure which might cause them to abuse their position or whether there are any other reasons why individuals should not have access to sensitive assets.

Personnel security aims to:

• reduce the risk of loss, damage or compromise of Australian Government resources by providing assurance about the suitability of personnel authorised to access those resources
• create an environment where those accessing Australian Government resources are aware of the responsibilities that come with that access and abide with their obligations under the PSPF
• minimise potential for misuse of Australian Government resources through inadvertent or deliberate unauthorised disclosure
• support a culture of protective security.

Controls designed around the following aspects would certainly help an organization to achieve the said purpose:

Information security awareness and training

Organizations must have a program to provide information security awareness and training for personnel on an on-going basis, focusing on information security policies including topics such as responsibilities, consequences of non–compliance, and potential security risks and counter–measures. It is human nature to lose or forget training content over time. Providing ongoing information security awareness and training helps keep personnel aware of issues and their responsibilities.

Information security awareness and training programs are designed to help personnel to: become familiar with their roles and responsibilities; understand and support security requirements; and learn how to fulfil their security responsibilities. Methods that can be used to continually promote awareness include logon banners, system access forms and departmental bulletins or memoranda.

Specific controls may be designed around the following aspects of information security awareness training:

• Accessibility of the Information Security Policies and Procedures
• Number and type of such programs to be offerred to personnel
• Degree and content of information security awareness and training, which may be based on the roles of employees and on the target systems to which they have access to.
• A scoring system for employees designed to establish the level of awareness by employees. A gamified approach would work better here.
• Establishing responsibility and accountability for security of the information assets.
• Review and feedback system for content and process improvement

Authorisations and Security Clearances

Depending on the roles and responsibilities, the employees gain access to various systems, data and information. It is important that only appropriately authorised, cleared and briefed personnel are allowed access to various such systems. For the purpose the systems, data and other information resources shall be identified and classified based on the sensititivity. Similarly, a mapping of various roles that would have different types of access on such resources is also created. This mapping will typically be based on the "need to know". Exceptions are also documented and are handled with additional clearances or approvals.

Employees seeking access to a system need to have a genuine business requirement to access the system as verified by their manager. Once a requirement to access a system is established, giving personnel only the privileges that they need to undertake their duties is imperative. Providing all personnel with privileged access when there is no requirement for privileged access can be a significant threat to a system. Any temporary access to information resources shall be time bound and the same shall be subject to close observation. Similarly, during emergency situations, privilege escalation may be required to carry out certain critical tasks. Such authorizations shall be documented and appropriate additional authorization shall be mandated.

Specific controls may be designed around the following aspects:

• Existence of a process for ascertaining employee's background and trust worthiness
• Documented inventory of information assets with appropriate security and sensitivity classification
• Documented roles and responsibilities of personnel
• Establishing the identity of the employees or contractors as the case may be
• Mapping of roles with the information assets
• Authorization for process for grant of privileges
• Change management process for privilege escalation or downgrade
• Maintenance of Access logs with necessary details
• Periodic review and audit of authorizations and access logs

Internet Usage

Use of internet is a major source of security breaches as it may facilitate external threats in the form of malware, virus. etc. There shall be a fair use policy with respoect to Internet, which shall set out the Do's and Don'ts for the employees. Employees should be made aware on how to report any suspicious contact and what suspicious contact is, especially contact from external sources using Internet services. Organizations should implement measures to monitor their personnel’s compliance with their internet usage policies.

Employees need to take special care not to accidentally post sensitive or classified information on public websites, especially in forums, blogs and social networking sites. Employees holding any key position may attribute an appropriate disclaimer that such posts carry his personal views and do not bind the organization.

The following specific controls may help in implementing the policies and procedures around this aspect:

• Existence of a Fair Use Policy
• Collection of logs and data for monitoring violations to such policies
• Initiation of disciplinary action against policy violations
• Enforce appropriate system security and privacy policies for internet usage
• Monitor the use of unspecified or unauthorized websites or applications that access internet.0

Architectural Security aspects of BGP/MPLS

The inherent benefits of the MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching), is gaining widespread use for providing IP VPN services. With the emerging trend of connected systems, a global enterprise today is well connected with their partners, with MPLS being the preferred choice. Border Gateway Routing Protocol (BGP) is used to interconnect such autonomous systems by exchanging the routing informaiton across such systems. The emergence of Multiprotocol Extension, and other variations of BGP Protocol, has furthered the choice of MPLS VPNs. On the same lines, the security concerns on using such a network is also on the rise. The specific demands of customers in terms of security is also emerging as they experience issues of data breaches and security incidents.

The objective of this blog is not to explain about the BGP / MPLS as such and instead let us examine how the BGP / MPLS addresses the typical security requirements in this blog. The following sections of this blog have been extracted from the RFC 4381 published by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2006.


Address Space, Routing, and Traffic Separation

BGP/MPLS allows distinct IP VPNs to use the same address space, which can also be private address space. This is achieved by adding a 64-bit Route Distinguisher (RD) to each IPv4 route, making VPN-unique addresses also unique in the MPLS core. This "extended" address is also called a "VPN-IPv4 address". Thus, customers of a BGP/MPLS IP VPN service do not need to change their current addressing plan. The address space on the CE-PE link (including the peering PE address) is considered part of the VPN address space. Since address space can overlap between VPNs, the CE-PE link addresses can overlap between VPNs. For practical management considerations, SPs typically address CE-PE links from a global pool, maintaining uniqueness across the core.

On the data plane, traffic separation is achieved by the ingress PE pre-pending a VPN-specific label to the packets. The packets with the VPN labels are sent through the core to the egress PE, where the VPN label is used to select the egress VRF. Given the addressing, routing, and traffic separation across an BGP/ MPLS IP VPN core network, it can be assumed that this architecture offers in this respect the same security as a layer-2 VPN. It is not possible to intrude from a VPN or the core into another VPN unless this has been explicitly configured. If and when confidentiality is required, it can be achieved in BGP/ MPLS IP VPNs by overlaying encryption services over the network. However, encryption is not a standard service on BGP/MPLS IP VPNs.

Hiding of the BGP/MPLS IP VPN Core Infrastructure

Service providers and end-customers do not normally want their network topology revealed to the outside. This makes attacks more difficult to execute: If an attacker doesn't know the address of a victim, he can only guess the IP addresses to attack. Since most DoS attacks don't provide direct feedback to the attacker it would be difficult to attack the network. It has to be mentioned specifically that information hiding as such does not provide security. However, in the market this is a perceived requirement. 

With a known IP address, a potential attacker can launch a DoS attack more easily against that device. Therefore, the ideal is to not reveal any information about the internal network to the outside world. This applies to the customer network and the core. A number of additional security measures also have to be taken: most of all, extensive packet filtering. For security reasons, it is recommended for any core network to filter packets from the "outside" (Internet or connected VPNs) destined to the core infrastructure. This makes it very hard to attack the core, although some functionality such as pinging core routers will be lost. Traceroute across the core will still work, since it addresses a destination outside the core.

Being reachable from the Internet automatically exposes a customer network to additional security threats. Appropriate security mechanisms have to be deployed such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems. This is true for any Internet access, over MPLS or direct. A BGP/MPLS IP VPN network with no interconnections to the Internet has security equal to that of FR or ATM VPN networks. With an Internet access from the MPLS cloud, the service provider has to reveal at least one IP address (of the peering PE router) to the next provider, and thus to the outside world.

Resistance to Attacks

To attack an element of a BGP/MPLS IP VPN network, it is first necessary to know the address of the element. The addressing structure of the BGP/MPLS IP VPN core is hidden from the outside world. Thus, an attacker cannot know the IP address of any router in the core to attack. The attacker could guess addresses and send packets to these addresses. However, due to the address separation of MPLS each incoming packet will be treated as belonging to the address space of the customer. Thus, it is impossible to reach an internal router, even by guessing IP addresses.

In the case of a static route that points to an interface, the CE router doesn't need to know any IP addresses of the core network or even of the PE router. This has the disadvantage of needing a more extensive (static) configuration, but is the most secure option. In this case, it is also possible to configure packet filters on the PE interface to deny any packet to the PE interface. This protects the router and the whole core from attack. In all other cases, each CE router needs to know at least the router ID (RID, i.e., peer IP address) of the PE router in the core, and thus has a potential destination for an attack.

A potential attack could be to send an extensive number of routes, or to flood the PE router with routing updates. Both could lead to a DoS, however, not to unauthorised access. To reduce this risk, it is necessary to configure the routing protocol on the PE router to operate as securely as possible. This can be done in various ways: 

• By accepting only routing protocol packets, and only from the CE router. The inbound ACL on each CE interface of the PE router should allow only routing protocol packets from the CE to the PE. 
• By configuring MD5 authentication for routing protocols. This is available for BGP (RFC 2385 [6]), OSPF (RFC 2154 [4]), and RIP2 (RFC 2082 [3]), for example. 

This avoids packets being spoofed from other parts of the customer network than the CE router. It requires the service provider and customer to agree on a shared secret between all CE and PE routers. It is necessary to do this for all VPN customers. It is not sufficient to do this only for the customer with the highest security requirements.

It is theoretically possible to attack the routing protocol port to execute a DoS attack against the PE router. This in turn might have a negative impact on other VPNs on this PE router. For this reason, PE routers must be extremely well secured, especially on their interfaces to CE routers. ACLs must be configured to limit access only to the port(s) of the routing protocol, and only from the CE router.

Label Spoofing

Similar to IP spoofing attacks, where an attacker fakes the source IP address of a packet, it is also theoretically possible to spoof the label of an MPLS packet. For security reasons, a PE router should never accept a packet with a label from a CE router. RFC 3031 [9] specifies: "Therefore, when a labeled packet is received with an invalid incoming label, it MUST be discarded, UNLESS it is determined by some means that forwarding it unlabeled cannot cause any harm."

There remains the possibility to spoof the IP address of a packet being sent to the MPLS core. Since there is strict address separation within the PE router, and each VPN has its own VRF, this can only harm the VPN the spoofed packet originated from; that is, a VPN customer can attack only himself. MPLS doesn't add any security risk here. The Inter-AS and Carrier's Carrier cases are special cases, since on the interfaces between providers typically packets with labels are exchanged. See section 4 for an analysis of these architectures.

There are a number of precautionary measures outlined above that a service provider can use to tighten security of the core, but the security of the BGP/MPLS IP VPN architecture depends on the security of the service provider. If the service provider is not trusted, the only way to fully secure a VPN against attacks from the "inside" of the VPN service is to run IPsec on top, from the CE devices or beyond. This document discussed many aspects of BGP/MPLS IP VPN security. It has to be noted that the overall security of this architecture depends on all components and is determined by the security of the weakest part of the solution.

WAF - Typical Detection & Protection Techniques

WAF - Web Application Firewalls is a new breed of information security technology that offers protection to web sites and web applications from malicious attacks. As the name suggests, WAF solution is intended scanning the HTTP and HTTPS traffic alone. The WAF solutions have evolved over the last few years and are capable of preventing attacks that network firewalls and intrusion detection systems can't. The WAF offering typically comes in the form of a packaged appliance, i.e. with a purpose built hardware and a software running on it and is plugged in to the network. Different appliances offer different level of deployment capabilities, like, active / passive modes, support for High Availability,etc.

Different vendors have come up with various techniques to detect and protect web applications of the enterprise and thus the capabilities of the solution differ. However, at a minimum these devices offer the following detection and protection capabilities:

Detection Techniques

Normalization techniques

Web applications of those days were simple and mostly was comprising of the HTML content. Various tools and solutions have emerged to leverage the HTTP protocol for use by various applications to receive and send complex data including encoded binary data of higher volumes and also extend the use of the HTTP methods. Hackers also leverage these techniques to attack a web application. This calls for the WAF device should have the ability to use a technique to transform the input data into a normalized form, so that the same can be inspected for potential malicious content that could be leverage to perform an attack.

Signature Based Detection

This technique involves use of a string or regular expression based match against the incoming traffic for a specific signature and thus detecting a potential attack. For this purpose, the need to maintain a database of such attack signature is essential. Most popular WAF solution vendors maintain their own databases, whereas others subscribe to such databases.These databases need frequent updates to take into account the signatures used in recent attacks elsewhere.

Rule Based Detection 

Rule based Detection technique is similar to Signature Based Detection, but it allows use of a more complex logic. For instance, even if a signature match is detected, it can be further subjected to certain other conditions, like if the data is from a trusted source, the traffic may still be allowed to pass through with or without appropriate alerts and triggers for manual inspection. While the WAF solution is shipped with the standard rules, the same would be configurable to meet the security needs of the customer. The standard rules may also be part of the signature / rule database as may be maintained or subscribed to by the vendor

APIs for Extensibility

Despite the standard signature and rule based detection techniques, the actual deployment scenario at the customer site may require customization of the techniques used in detection. WAF solutions vendors usually support this need by offering extensible APIs, plug-ins, or scripting. These extensiblity options if not appropriately secured, can be exploited by hackers too.


Protection Techniques

Brute Force Attacks Mitigation

These attacks use automated scripts that attempt to login to the web application with common user name and passwords. The attacks usually originate from a large number of sources consisting of both legitimate web servers and private home computers. Once a username and password is successfully guessed, the hackers or their scripts / tools use the gained admin credentials for the next stage of attacks. Given that the user name passwords follow stricter rules and thus these attack is most likely to fail in guessing the valid credentials, but these attacks generate unduly high traffic, which will result in resource drain and in turn affect the availability of the web application.

Protection from Cookie Poisoning

Cookie Poisoning attacks involve the modification of the contents of a cookie (personal information stored in a Web user's computer) in order to bypass security mechanisms. Using cookie poisoning attacks, attackers can gain unauthorized information about another user and steal their identity. Cookie poisoning is in fact a Parameter Tampering attack, where the parameters are stored in a cookie. In many cases cookie poisoning is more useful than other Parameter Tampering attacks because programmers store sensitive information in the allegedly invisible cookie. Most WAF solutions offer protection from Cookie poisoning by facilitating the signing and / or encryption of cookies, virtualizing the cookies or a custom protection mechanism as the specific web application may demand.

Session Attacks Mitigation

Session store is an important component of a web application and this store is used to share some of the common parameters pertaining to the user and the specific session across various actions within the application. Thus the session data is a key component that is used to secure the web applications. The hackers on the other hand try various techniques to hijack the session or tamper the session parameters. While tampering the parameter values is similar to Cookie Poisoning, Session Hijacking is stealing the session identifier and simulating requests from different sources with the stolen session identity. WAF solutions provide protection to session hijacking by signing and / or encrypting the session data and also linking the session identifier with the originating client.

Injection Attack Protection

An SQL injection attack is insertion of a SQL query via the input data from the client to the application. A successful SQL injection attack can read sensitive data from the database, modify database data, or shutdown the server. Similarly operating system and platform commands can often be used to give attackers access to data and escalate privileges on back-end servers Remote File Inclusion attacks allow malicious users to run their own PHP code on a vulnerable website to access anything that the PHP program could: databases, password files, etc. Most WAF solutions using the normalization technique and the signature and rule database would be able to deny requests carrying such data, command or instruction that could lead to any of the injection attacks.

DDoS Protection

Distributed Denial of Attack is a common technique used by hackers to impair the availability of a website or application by directing unusually huge traffic against the site or application. This will result in all the computing resources used up and eventually leading to the site not being available at all. The WAF solutions making use of the normalization techniques and the signature and rule databases would be able to block such requests. Some common techniques used by the WAF solutions are to have a check on the content length and by evaluating the number of requests or sessions from the same originating client within a given time period.


Obviously, what is listed above are most common detection and protection techniques that any WAF solution would offer. But vendors are constantly improving these techniques and thus adding more detection and protection features. This has to be a constant endeavor as the hackers on the other hand are also coming up with newer techniques to exploit various vulnerabilities.

IT Governance For Small Businesses - Constraints

There is a perception that IT Governance best suits for large organizations and small organizations tend to ignore it considering the efforts and resources that is required in practicing the IT Governance within. But IT Governance is equally important for smaller organizations as well, so that the IT function however small it is deliver maximum value for the business and at the same time to keep the risk exposure to the minimum. Existing frameworks like COBIT are too extensive for small businesses to use in implementing IT governance. These frameworks however are too complex and costly to implement and small businesses may consider it a bigger battle to implement and manage such framework.


ISACA however recommends to take an evolutive approach and thus take smaller steps first and let it evolve. Small businesses should convert the high-level concept of governance into practical and easy to implement best practices. The resource pools available with the small businesses will be a lot smaller and even outsourcing might prove expensive, considering the business volume and thus establishing an RoI on implementing IT Governance could be a bigger challenge.


It is not just the resources and cost, there are certain other characteristics of small businesses, which come in way of implementing an IT Governance. Here are some such characteristics, which an IT Governance framework designed for a small business should take into consideration.


Smaller or no Board of Directors

Many small businesses are closely held and thus could be a family business or private limited company with a small number of Directors on the Board. Having an Independent Director or a Director with IT background on the board is a big ask. This will leave the concentration of IT decision making with few or even single individual, which could be the CEO or the owner himself. IT savvy business owners or CEOs tend to use or leverage IT more for their business and thus have some degree of adoption of standards, practices and frameworks. In such cases, the choice of technology, standards, practices, etc are most likely limited to the knowledge levels of the owner or CEO and they don't take a leap forward into unfamiliar areas, which will call for more resources in evaluating and establishing the RoI for the same.

Organization Structure

One of the first step in implementing the IT Governance in an organization is to get an IT Strategy Committee and an IT Steering Committee with representation from different functions and from the Board. Small businesses do not have the extensive management structures to have such committee(s). The organization structure with small business are not as extensive as that of large organizations and as such enforcing separation of duties may not be feasible at all. For instance, the Finance Manager of a small business will also perform the function of IT procurement with minimal support from IT Administrators. Similarly, having a separate CIO could be a bigger ask for a small businesses as the costs for having such resources does not warrant the return.

Smaller IT departments

Having a fully functional IT department is a big investment for a small business. Thanks to the cloud trend and software as a service, this is a challenge even the IT departments in large organizations are facing. Cloud based services like Google Apps for business and Microsoft's Office 365, coupled with various specific purpose software as a service, it is becoming a lot easier for the businesses to get its IT up and running with least help from IT experts. This characteristic of a small business leads to a situation where a non-IT staff might have to take up the IT Governance initiative, which obviously has a challenge within as such staff might not comprehend the nuances of the Governance practices and jargon.

Lack of complementing frameworks

IT Governance  framework generally relies on various other practices or frameworks practiced in an organization. For instance ITIL, Enterprise Risk Management, ISO, CMMI, etc are some such standards or frameworks, the existence of which makes adoption of an IT Governance framework a bit seamless. In a small business existence of such standards is highly unlikely. Small businesses need an IT governance framework that is simpler, self containing and easier to implement, and only contain controls that are not dependent on a control practice of a different standard or practice.

Information security

While small business are not the target of hackers or attackers, the risk of information security always remained. For obvious reasons that arise out of the characteristics listed here, small businesses could not see the return on investment in information security. For that matter, small business do not have a formal risk management practice. They, typically, do not possess some of the basic elements of security management like information security policies, backup and disaster recovery, security awareness and up-to-date anti-virus protection. An IT governance framework aimed at small businesses will have to include a strong emphasis on information security and address the common security risks affecting small businesses.

Resources & Tools

Use of sophisticated software applications make implementation and practicing IT Governance easier, but it calls for heavy investment, which is beyond the reach for small businesses. For instance, Performance Evaluation of various IT resources call for collection of data and come up with various metrics that can be used to benchmark and as well measure the performance of IT resources and functions. This is made easier by using automated tools and depending on manual methods could prove cumbersome and data inaccuracy.
Because of the lack of financial and technical resources, small businesses cannot make use of such automated tools or software systems for the purpose.


Though the above list is not exhaustive, what are listed above are the ones that can be considered as key constraints for an IT Governance framework for the small business to address. There is no one solution fits all even for large organizations. The IT Governance framework has to be designed, created and managed as relevant for each organization. That includes even a small business. While one may pick and choose controls from various frameworks and tailor them to suit the specific small or medium business. The framework should however provide for evolution, so that the same can improve based on feedback from the practice.

Internet of Things: What Strange Things Can Happen

It was about 6 years back, by when we have started to see WiFi enabled digital cameras and we were wondering what this has to do in a digital camera. But with that, the digital cameras were able to upload the captured images automatically to the cloud based photo albums. Later came in GPS equiped digital cameras, which attaches the location to the captured images. Of course, with smart phones equiped with higher resolution cameras, the digital cameras are on the downfall. That is just a well known example of how a 'thing' or a smart thing can connect to a network and share useful data for a purpose. So much have evolved since then and we now see a world of possibilities to have all the 'things' connected.


Researchers see a lot of benefits by making things smart and inter-connecting them. The networking technologies are also evolving at a brisk pace, offering various improvements over the wireless technologies and protocols. We can see this trend advancing further and may mature in about two decades from now. Looking further, in line with my blog on Human Interface Technology, even humans can remain connected, and that will render human disabilities a thing of the past century.


If you followed this year’s CES, it is evident that the future is all about connected devices. We could see everyday devices equipped with sensors and connectivity to work together, understand what we’re doing, and operate automatically to make our lives easier. Here are some of real world examples of Internet of Things:


A smart refrigerator that can read the embedded tags on the grocery items that are stored in it and then using the supported backend platform on the cloud, identify the items and fetch its details as to date of manufacture, expiry date, quantity, etc. Thus the fridge may alert the consumers about the state and stock of such items. With the kind of wearable gadgets that we see now, these alerts can be through such devices too. It is left to your imagination to what extent this smart capability can be extended.


Medical and emergency care is another area where the smart 'things' play a very useful and life saving role. For instance, a connected car can call emergency services faster than a mobile phone. Again, with the help of embedded or worn smart gadgets, the hospital can get to know the patient history as the patient gets into the hospital and can get ready for the emergency services thereby saving precious time, which can be life saving. Check out this interesting video. Check out this video that IBM has made out describing how it is growing fast and could invade into the everyday life of human beings.


Extending this further to the daily routines of a business executive, the possibilities are endless and here are some that are close to reality, if not already real:

• Your smartphone once it hears a hint about a meeting in a conversation, it will in the background look up your calendar and will pass on the busy / free information. If the executive uses a glass, then he would be seeing the schedule as he talks and thus facilitates the scheduling of the meetings.
• The smart alarms will be smart enough to consider information as to what time did go for sleep, the schedule (both personal and official) for the following day and thus will intelligently decide the wake up time in the morning and triggers the alarm.
• Depending on the traffic conditions, your car will intelligently suggest alternate routes to reach the office or such other scheduled meeting venue and if needed, automatically inform the meeting organizers about the possible delay or may seek rescheduling of the meeting.
• As you drive back home, you just remember that you need to pickup some drugs from a drugstore. Your smart car will already know this and will identify a store that stocks the drugs that you need and that is on the route or closer to the route that you drive. It can even place the order with the store and let the store keep your items ready for delivery and you just need to pick up enroute.
• Needless to say, your car will be smart enough to perform a health diagnostics of itself and will decide on a best date for its own garage visit so that your schedules are not impacted.
• These smart things will know about your presence and which device is in touch with you to send out alerts. For example, if you are at home watching TV, you may see your TV showing alerts from your washing machine and similarly, when you are at work, your smartphone would be used to show these notifications.
• Here are some more ways the 'Internet of Things' can impact your daily life.

Coming back to the household, you are watching your favorite action movie with surround sound and you did not changed your smartphone from a silent mode back to a ringing profile. You don't have to worry, your smartphone knows what you are upto and over a period would have learnt by itself, as to which of the calls you would want to answer at this situation and accordingly either rejects the call by answering the caller appropriately. If it is an important call that you would n't want to miss, it knows it already and will tone down the TV audio volume and thus draws your attention to the call and you don't have to reach out to your phone, your TV will take over the call from your smartphone. To extend this further, depending on the profiles of other members at the house, which the house already knows through its sensors and networks, your smart phone will decide whether to route the call on to the TV or not.


We can now visualize the possibilities and it is endless. The smart things will have built in learning capability and will keep learning from its master's behavior to perfect its services. This trend will lead us to a situation where the things might by themselves or under the influence of hackers attempt to take over human beings as portrayed in some of the recent science fiction movies. On top of this, hackers will also be leveraging these smart abilities to hack into these connected networks and could do whatever they have been doing with the connected systems now.


Here is how the hackers can intrude into your digital lifestyle:

• We have already seen reports of a smart refrigerators sending out spam emails.
• By hacking into your house network, hackers may get to know how many members are home or if there are none inside the home, which information will be useful for them to plan their burglary attempts, etc.
• Your TV may refuse to play your favorite channel and will rather play content that the hackers prefer you to watch.
• Your car may drive to a place that is different than where you wanted to visit. On the same lines, hackers can execute traffic diversions and cause traffic jams as portrayed in the movie Die Hard 4
• All your orders for home supplies may be hacked and deliveries may happen elsewhere, while you would have paid for it. And of course, your house network will still acknowledge for having received the deliveries, while it is not actually.
• The impact of hacking into the emergency service network could be huge and life threatening.
• Your smartphone can be hacked to refuse critical business calls and thus causing revenue impact to your organization.

IDC anticipates that more than 200 billion connected devices will be in use by 2021, with more than 30 billion being autonomous devices. Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) predicts some 25 billion devices will be connected by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020. How will having lots of things connected change everything? Find the answer in the infographic. With all this, Internet of Things is coming and will be here to stay soon. Whether we, the humans are ready to take on this evolution remains to be seen.